Heavy Networking

Stephen Butler, product line manager at Nokia for Event-Driven Automation, brings a short practical bio and tech focus. He discusses multi-vendor abstractions and combined config/state models. He explains schemas as an LLM decoder ring and workflow-driven troubleshooting. He outlines digital twin testing and modular apps that extend trustworthy AIOps.

Carlos Pignataro, founder of Blue Fern Consulting and long-time networking veteran, cuts through AI hype with a pragmatic view. He critiques intent-based networking and champions architectural decomposition into modular agents. He discusses where humans belong in autonomous systems, common AI misconceptions, and high-value telemetry and metadata use cases.

Are you an AI skeptic or an enthusiast? Ethan and Drew sit down with Igor Tarasenko, Senior Director of Product Software Architecture and Engineering at Equinix, to break down the reality of AI in the network. In this sponsored episode, Tarasenko discusses why APIs are the new CLI, the critical need for observability in AI,... Read more »

It’s been over a decade since the first Packet Pushers podcast on EVPN. Now, guest Jeff McAdams can legitimately suggest that we “EVPN all the things.” Hosts Ethan Banks and Drew Conry-Murray dig into Jeff’s stance on EVPN/VXLAN. They look at how VXLAN and EVPN work; talk about use cases in the data center, the... Read more »

Joining the discussion is Russ White, an experienced network engineer and author with decades in the field. He delves into whether IT favors younger professionals willing to embrace long hours and learning curves compared to seasoned veterans. The conversation covers the intense Silicon Valley grind, how modern networking's complexity can overwhelm newcomers, and the risk AI poses to entry-level roles. Russ highlights the importance of experience in navigating tech and the evolving landscape of IT roles driven by automation.

In this discussion, Andy Lapteff, a former CLI lifer and now a product marketing manager, shares his transformative journey into network automation and programming. He recounts his initial resistance to coding and his evolution through various roles at major companies like Verizon and Comcast. Andy vividly describes the challenges of adopting automation, including the fears around job loss from AI. He also emphasizes the importance of storytelling in overcoming biases against automation and showcases his commitment to community learning through his podcast.

Unit testing is a software development practice for checking that an individual component of code works before integrating that unit with other components in a larger program. A new open source project called Network Unit Testing System, or NUTS, brings the same concept to network automation. The big idea is that by incorporating unit tests into... Read more »

Steve Feldman, a veteran member of NANOG's Board of Directors, shares insights on the evolution of this crucial organization. He discusses NANOG's origins and key milestones, the symbiotic relationship with IETF, and how the internet landscape has shifted operator-vendor communications. Feldman emphasizes NANOG's role in tackling current hype cycles and maintaining relevance in a blurring service-provider landscape. He also highlights upcoming focuses, including AI and site reliability engineering, while reinforcing NANOG’s mission to educate the global networking community.

How do you architect a Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) to provide critical security services to millions of endpoints distributed across the planet? How do you build such a service for scale, performance, and resiliency? One option is to build your own PoPs or use colocation facilities, run your own infrastructure stack, and connect everything... Read more »

On today’s episode, we take a break from one’s and zero’s for a discussion about starting a networking meetup. Our guest is Steinn “Steinzi” Örvar, who recently founded the ISNOG, a network operators’ group in Iceland. We quiz Steinzi about what worked and what didn’t. We also pick his brain for the nitty-gritty details about... Read more »